re: #379 recusancy

Is that still the case?

More recently…

Beauty justifies wealth

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Mr Jobs’s wealth, like that of other billionaire barons of the information age, was built in no small part upon an intellectual-property regime that I and many others believe to retard progress while concentrating massive rewards upon a privileged few, generating unfair and unproductive inequality. Now, I remember when Bill Gates used to get plenty of heat from the class warriors, but some time after the world’s wealthiest nerd devoted a huge portion of his fortune to his charitable foundation, he ascended to a sort of philanthropic secular sainthood a few notches short of Warrenus Buffetus of Omaha, his partner in spectacular beneficence. Showy altruism has long served as a strategy for justifying huge accumulations of wealth in the envious eyes of the public, but Mr Jobs has eschewed charity. According to James Altucher:

[Mr Jobs] doesn’t give any money to charity. And when he became Apple’s CEO he stopped all of its philanthropic programs. He said, “wait until we are profitable”. Now Apple is profitable, and sitting on $40 billion in cash, and still no corporate philanthropy. I actually think Jobs is probably the most charitable guy on the planet. Rather than focus on which mosquitoes to kill in Africa (Bill Gates is already focusing on that), Jobs has put his energy into massively improving quality of life with all of his inventions.

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Saying that his products is a contribution equal to chairty or philanthropy is quite a stretch.